Random blog posts about research in political communication, how people learn or don't learn from the media, why it all matters -- plus other stuff that interests me. It's my blog, after all. I can do what I want.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

At Least He Called It Unscienific

Check out the questions, which seem more or less reasonable. Here's the real issue -- what the hell do you compare the answers to? Logic would say the same questions asked before the advent of smartphones. After all, if your point is they make us dumber, then you need a comparison group. I know, I know. Logic and TV news, not the same thing. Another way to compare this would be between people who do and do not have smartphones, but that would be so confounded by age, and maybe income, as to be useless without sophisticated statistical manipulations.

By the way, there are several here I can't answer. Clearly my smartphone has made me dumber. Then again, I doubt I could ever ask them, even before I had a smartphone -- so toss that hypothesis out the window, TV guy.